


victory's ghost.

by ikeaplushie



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Character Study, Clay | Dream Has ADHD (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, self projection pog, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeaplushie/pseuds/ikeaplushie
Summary: He has this dream, of living like how he projects himself to the world. Of not living his life tired of his brain. If he could rewrite his history, his own biology, no matter the cost, Dream thinks he would take it. He just wants normalcy.When he grew up, the first death he encountered in his life, was the one of the loss of his childhood-self.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	victory's ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> vent :]

Dream likes to think he has his life pretty sorted. He’s from a good family, he’s pretty mentally okay, most days. He’s never been bullied before in his life, and has always been well liked. They’re facts of his life, as is him having ADHD. It’s just… a part of him and his life, much like his friends are, much like his cat is. 

He got diagnosed in his late preteens. He didn’t fit the mold of whatever they were looking for, but eventually he convinced them. There is anger, simmering under the surface, over the injustice of the system, over the need to fit such a strict system and having to go through years of waiting lists, of random psychiatrists who pried their way into his life, just to determine he was fucking lying about his struggles. It is always there. He pushes it down. 

The years go by. Dream forgets what it is like to breathe. The thought is always hanging, low-picking fruit in the back of his mind. He feels like he is constantly clawing for air, grasping at straws for something so instinctual. He finally has a name to put to feeling too much, too intensely. Emotional dysregulation seems too clinical a name for something that leaves him crying into his hands because everything is overwhelming, because there are too many noises, too many sounds, too many senses overloading him and he doesn’t know what to do, he never does, so he sits and cries, and cries, and takes shuddering breaths, and cringes more at the noise that makes. 

He is a functioning member of society. He lives his life, masked, most of the time, but he lives. 

School fucks him over. He depends on motivation, and passion. He always has, he doesn’t think he will ever learn to not. He runs out of those constantly. He slacks behind on projects. The meds start not functioning as well. He doesn’t understand why. He was such a gifted child. The school system was debating moving him up a year. Dream doesn’t understand where it went downhill. 

It isn’t fair to say it went downhill. 

Because his grades are fine. They’re above average- he’s top of the class in so many fucking subjects. But he isn’t doing well. It’s not gifted kid burnout, it can’t be. He is not burning out, much less extinguished. He’s doing well.

Dream is doing fine. His life is fine. He never hands projects in, he does well on tests. He tries to do work at three am, he does, you have to believe that he tries, but his hyperfixation is easier, it’s smoother to concentrate on. Why would he work when he knows he is talented, when he knows he is academically gifted? He can pass his tests perfectly fine, he cannot concentrate on the four tabs open, they might as well be blank. So surely, his hyperfixation is more important?

Even when the hyperfixation leaves him wanting sleep, wanting food, water, when his brain is screaming at him to do something productive, he sees no point in leaving. He procrastinates anything he can. Dream goes through the motions of his life, while never really being there.

He feels like a burning wick. One doomed for eternity to flicker, just extinguished enough to suffer, never enough to warrant concern. 

There are days, more frequently now that the meds are faulty, where being asked to do anything will leave him shaking in anger, in sadness, in an emotion he can’t name that leaves him choking for air. And it doesn’t matter that he is fine, because he feels like he is dying, and he cannot function, and his vocal tics leave with aggression, and his motion tics are even worse. He is paralysed, sitting on the floor, and he is lost.

The symptoms of ADHD are parallel with what he has been living with for as long as he can remember, nothing changed when he got diagnosed. But it hits him so fucking hard, it feels like a hand is compressing his entire chest, constricting his every motion, his ragged breaths are never enough. He knows, he knows his all or nothing mentality is ruining him. He knows he cannot properly live without addressing his impulse control that threatens to take over his life.  
His friends are fine. Better than fine, really. He loves them, he truly does. But they don’t understand- they never fucking will. He infodumps on them and when he receives a reply that is uninterested, when he reaches out and they don’t reply for hours, he knows, that it is nothing against him as a person, but it leaves him wanting nothing more than to disappear, than to stop existing, convinced his friends hate him. At least, the friends he manages to keep. He is bad at responding, and maintaining conversation. He forgets. He does not have the energy to. They’re facts of his life. Dream puts his friends through a test, before letting them into his life. He acts as he does on his worst days for weeks, when he cannot communicate, when he is angry and confused, and lets them decide whether to stay.

His frustration leaks into every single aspect of his life, no matter where he goes. He focuses sporadically, and almost never on anything he wants. He wants to cry. Sometimes he does. He has a headache constantly, from something he can’t tell. He wants to function like a normal member of society. He can’t. 

Dream feels like he is ruined. He knows he is not. But he is so, so irreversibly tired of his life. Laying awake at night, with his tics that annoy everyone around him, including himself, he overthinks, and he is so exhausted. Looking forward at his future, he knows he is expected to live a good life. He is a gifted child. He is a functioning member of society. He is perfectly okay. 

He is faulty. He must be. There is nothing surrounding him tonight. He is staring at his laptop, light blurring his retinas, and he cannot focus. He cannot focus on anything, and he is tired. His life is repetitive, a repeating series of actions he sees no point in repeating. He wants to hit his brain into working. He has been sitting here for two hours. It feels like less time. It feels like more. He is suddenly all too aware of his chair. The air entering his nose feels wrong. 

Dream buries his head in his hands. He is trying, and he doesn’t understand why it doesn’t show. He just wants to function. 

The laptop is shut off. The lights are turned off. Dream sits on the corner of his bed and stares at his clock. He prepares for several long hours of wanting sleep, and it not coming. Of waking up the next morning and repeating today’s actions. 

He wakes up. There is sunlight streaming through his window. He’s relatively fine, all things considered. But he is still sick of living like this, angry at the universe, at himself, at anything that will listen to his rage, and feels worse remembering this will persist in his life forever, until he dies.


End file.
